Sebastian Junger takes on survival in a divided world in his new book TRIBE

Submitted by Vicki DeArmon on Thu, 05/19/2016 - 11:57am

Sebastian Junger will appear at the Uptown Theatre in Napa on Friday, June 3 to talk about the findings from his new book, TRIBE: On Homecoming and Belonging. The event is co-hosted by Copperfield’s Books and the Uptown Theatre as part of the launch of a new event series featuring high profile authors.

Junger will discuss the importance of tribes as a social construct and what tribal societies teach us about loyalty, belonging, and the eternal human quest for meaning. Junger is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of War, The Perfect Storm, Fire, and ADeath in Belmont. Together with Tim Hetherington, he directed the film Restrepo, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. After the author talk and book signing, there will be a screening of this documentary film, which chronicles a platoon–essentially a wartime tribe–of US soldiers in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, creating a 90-minute deployment experience for viewers.

According to Junger, tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the incredibly intimate bonds of platoon life. The loss of closeness that comes at the end of deployment may help explain the high rates of post traumatic stress disorder suffered by military veterans today.

Combining history, psychology, and anthropology, Junger talks about the irony that—for many veterans as well as civilians—war feels better than peace, adversity can turn out to be a blessing, and disasters are sometimes remembered more fondly than weddings or tropical vacation. Junger explains why people are stronger when they come together and how that can be achieved even in today’s divided world.

Junger is also an award-winning journalist and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair.

General admission tickets are available through Copperfield’s Books and the Uptown Theatre. Attendees can choose to pay $15 General Admission or pay $10 admission with the purchase of the $25 book Tribe. ($35 admits one and $45 admits two.) Service fees apply to tickets. The event starts at 7:30 pm.